Dr. Michael Vasquez has no problem advising would-be Duke University students interested in subjects beyond science to get creative if theyre accepted into the top-notch school.

After all, thats what the Williamsville native did.

Vasquez graduated from Duke with a bachelors degree in religion along with all of the pre-med courses he needed to get into the University at Buffalo School of Medicine. Nearly three decades later, he serves as an alumni interviewer for Western New Yorkers who apply to his North Carolina alma mater.

I was interested in religion, I was interested in the humanities, said Vasquez, 50, who now lives in East Amherst. It gave me a whole skills set in terms of being able to read and write critically.

He also took public speaking and public policy classes, along with a leadership program that allowed him to meet then-Gov. John H. Sununu of New Hampshire, journalist Cokie Roberts, and members of the civil rights movements Freedom Riders.

He and other alums in the region get together annually with those accepted to the school. Its a group that includes fellow doctors, as well as lawyers, a CPA, a leading Moog engineer and UB basketball coach Bobby Hurley, who led Duke to two NCAA mens basketball championships as a point guard in the early 1990s.

Vasquez is a general surgeon who founded and operates the Venous Institute of Buffalo, which sits on the DeGraff Memorial Hospital campus in North Tonawanda. He also is a clinical assistant professor at UB Medical School.

He followed his father, now-retired Dr. Anibal Vasquez, into the medical field, and is in the midst of clinical trials that include a new procedure used to shut down varicose veins.

Did you know at Duke that you wanted to be a doctor?

I knew as a child. I went with my father to (St. Josephs) hospital when I was young and I remember watching him work in the emergency room sewing up a laceration. I was just awestruck. Summers, he helped me get positions to do local research and get into hospitals to get experience, and that experience made a big difference. I used to draw blood at Roswell and I did research there.

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